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I “Grievance Before Supply”: Omnibus Budget Implementation Legislation As a Case When Party Discipline Damages Parliamentary

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I “Grievance Before Supply”: Omnibus Budget Implementation Legislation As a Case When Party Discipline Damages Parliamentary “Grievance before Supply”: Omnibus Budget Implementation Legislation as a Case when Party Discipline Damages Parliamentary Democracy by Louise Cockram Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia March 2014 © Copyright by Louise Cockram, 2014 i TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE NO. LIST OF TABLES iii LIST OF FIGURES iv ABSTRACT v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO- WHAT IS AT STAKE? AN EXAMINATION OF THE BUDGET PROCESS IN THE WESTMINSTER SYSTEM AND PARLIAMENT’S SCRUTINY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ROLE 5 CHAPTER THREE - DEFINING THE PROBLEM OF OMNIBUS BUDGET IMPLEMENTATION LEGISLATION: DATA ON BUDGET BILLS FROM 1994-2013 27 CHAPTER FOUR - AN OMNIBUDGET OMNISHAMBLES: QUANTIFYING DAMAGE TO PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY 44 CHAPTER FIVE – CONCLUSION 53 BIBLIOGRAPHY 65 APPENDIX A TABLE OF DATA ON BUDGET LEGISLATION , 1994-2013 68 ii LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Table of number of pages and non-budgetary amendments included in budget bills from 1994-2006. The number of minutes budget bills passed in the period from 2003-2006 were considered in the House, also the average number of minutes per page each budget bill was considered in the House of Commons.…………………68 Table 1.2 Table of number of pages and non-budgetary amendments included in budget bills from 2006-2013. The number of minutes budget bills passed in the period from 2006-2013 were considered in the House, also the average number of minutes per page each budget bill was considered in the House of Commons………………………………………...........................69 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Number of pages included in budget legislation from 1994-2013….40 Figure 2 Number of non-budgetary amendments included in omnibus budget legislation from 1994-2013..................................................................41 Figure 3 Minutes of consideration each budget bill received in the House of Commons 2003-2013…………………………………………………………….42 Figure 4 Average number of minutes each page of each budget bill was debated for in House of Commons 2003-2013………………………………………43 iv ABSTRACT This thesis explores the circumstances under which party discipline damages parliamentary democracy in the Canadian House of Commons. It uses omnibus budget implementation legislation as a case study of an instance when party discipline damages parliamentary democracy. While party discipline is central to parliamentary democracy, it can also undermine it if imposed too strictly. This thesis establishes a model of parliamentary democracy in which the House of Commons is meant to scrutinize, deliberate on, and occasionally amend legislation. It then identifies omnibus budgets as a trend in Canada through the following data on budget bills: number of pages, number of amendments, and length of debate. Finally, this thesis describes three key ways that omnibus budget legislation damaged the model of parliamentary democracy outlined at the beginning. The passage of omnibus budget legislation is a perfect illustration of the “parliamentary decline” thesis and provides a useful departure for future efforts at the reform of parliament to enhance the role of backbench members. v LIST OF ABREVIATIONS USED MP Member of Parliament FINA Finance Committee of the Canadian House of Commons vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a great deal of gratitude to my family and partner for their support during the course of my MA. A big thank you to Michael, Carolyn, Steven, Joey, Bobby and Lexie. A special shout out to my partner Joey who gave me advice on formatting the tables included in this thesis and to my brother, Steven, who helped me with some of the maths that was involved. Thank you also to my friends in the 2012-2013 MA cohort. Grad school wouldn’t have been the same without you. The final acknowledgement goes to my thesis supervisor, Dr. Carbert. Despite our ups and downs, with your help and encouragement, I have managed to write a thesis I am proud of. vii CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION This thesis will explore the circumstances under which party discipline damages parliamentary democracy in Canada. It will use the case study of omnibus budget implementation bills as an instance when party discipline damages parliamentary democracy. While party discipline is central to the functioning of parliamentary democracy, it can also undermine it if imposed too strictly. This thesis will propose a model of parliamentary democracy through which I will seek to demonstrate that parliament is a deliberative and legislative body. Parliament is meant to improve legislation, not to give blind legitimacy to decisions that have been made by executive power. Omnibus budget implementation legislation is problematic in the context of parliamentary democracy because it amends legislation that would not otherwise be under the purview of budgetary matters. Therefore non-budgetary legislation is placed under the unique (and often secretive) procedural rules that budget bills are subject to in Westminster parliamentary democracies. To begin, it is important to define two key terms; parliamentary democracy and omnibus budget legislation. Parliamentary democracy in this case will refer to the institutional workings of the Westminster form of responsible government. Responsible government is a system in which the executive is responsible to the legislature. In other words, the legislature can, if it chooses to, lose confidence in the government and make it fall on a confidence vote. In the system of responsible government the electorate chooses members of parliament, who then choose the government.1 By extension, it is the duty of the House to approve the expenditures and budgetary policy of the government. In other words express grievance before approving government budgets. In recent years the media as well as opposition MPs have noticed a trend towards budget implementation bills growing larger in both size and scope. Budget bills of this sort are characterised as omnibus budget bills. While omnibus budget legislation has been mentioned many times in newspaper opinion- editorials, in opposition press releases, there is no standard definition. For the purposes of this 1 Peter Russell, Two Cheers for Minority Government, (Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications Limited, 2008), 1 1 thesis omnibus budget implementation legislation will be defined as a budget implementation act that amends many pieces of legislation only tangentially related to budgetary matters. A fuller explanation and discussion of omnibus budget legislation will be included later in this thesis. During the passage of omnibus budget bills C-38 and C-45, the most far reaching both in terms of size and scope, there was media and opposition outrage. Headlines screamed epithets like “Frankenomnibudget;”2 opposition members moved points of privilege against the bills and issued angry press statements. The general complaint from the media and official opposition was that there was not enough time to debate the bills, especially in proportion to their size and scope. While there has been substantial media coverage of omnibus budget legislation, the social scientific analysis has been scant. One of the secondary goals of this thesis is to try to determine the validity of media and opposition claims that the passage of omnibus budget bills has become a trend in Canada. It will do this by examining data on budget legislation. Specifically, this thesis will try to determine the size and scope of the bills and how long they were considered in the House of Commons. This quantitative analysis, which looks at budget bills from 1994-2013, will form the empirical core of this thesis. A fuller explanation of the logic behind this thesis as well as methodology is offered below. 1) There is a model of parliamentary democracy. In summary, this model is based on the idea that parliament is meant to deliberate on, scrutinize and occasionally amend legislation. This model will be explained further in chapter two. 2) For parliament to fulfill this scrutiny and accountability role, members must be sufficiently independent to scrutinize government bills and actions. This includes government MPs, who, while generally supportive of most government policies and actions, must still fulfill a scrutiny and accountability role. 3) However, members are weak and this weakness is caused by party discipline 4) Members are too weak to resist the passage of omnibus budget implementation legislation, despite the fact that the passage of omnibus budget legislation fundamentally undermined their role, which is to scrutinize, deliberate on and occasionally amend legislation. 2 Kady O’Malley, Inside Politics Blog, cbc.ca http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-politics-blog/2012/10/orders- of-the-day---who-will-be-the-first-to-call-it-frankenstomnibudget.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2 5) There has been a trend towards the passage of omnibus budget legislation in Canada and this merits study. To demonstrate this pattern of logic, this thesis will first outline the Westminster budget procedure and the historical relevance of budgets to the Westminster form of government. This will form the first part of the second chapter. Chapter two will also include a model of parliamentary democracy. The final section of this chapter will inform the reader of the place party discipline has in a parliamentary democracy but also its nuances; party discipline cannot be so strict as to undermine the model of parliamentary democracy outlined at the start of this thesis. Chapter three will introduce omnibus budget bills as a case study of an instance when party discipline damages parliamentary democracy. It will also further defend why the passage of omnibus budgets deserves to be studied. This chapter will establish that budgets that are large in both size and scope are a problem in Canada’s parliament by including data on budget implementation acts from 1994-2013. Data on budget bills passed between 1994-2013 will be displayed in four figures in the form of bar graphs. Figure one will show the number of pages included in budget legislation.
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